About 18000 years before the arcane era, the founder of the mudborns, Karn, listened to the divine symphony.

  Karn was a shaman for the tribe. He was the one who used ochre to paint on the walls of the cave, and he was the one who built totems. It was not like others would not do these things, but he was the one doing these the most.

  What he found most fascinating, though, was another thing entirely. It was what they used for cooking that was interesting to him. A hand-formed vessel made of clay. It made him wonder what else is made of clay. If even the figures of gods could be made of mud below, what else could come from the mud? Perhaps they were born of mud themselves.

  One night when Karn was dwelling on the possibility, sleep overtook him and he dreamed. He dreamed of mud moving like a slug and being shaped like men. He dreamed of fire and sun drying the mud, forming clay men. He dreamed of the clay shattering one by one and men being born.

  The next morning Karn was overcome with fervent obsession for the craft. He couldn't form human-sized men of clay with such precision; he knew that, but since that day, every single day was spent on pottery. In his fervent obsession guided by the divine symphony, he soon made art of shaping clay and perhaps became the first genuine potter. After all, pottery is not just working with clay and shaping it but a craft and an art.

  Karn's mastery of pottery grew, and his tribe tasted tangible benefits. They soon found their life became easier because Karn, in his pursuit of perfecting his art, would create tools that served the tribe. The main focus of Karn, however, was on the humanoid statue beginning to take shape. It was growing taller and taller. It was Karn's great work, and in shaping it, Karn had come across too many obstacles to count.

  It was only when, by some miracle, after a few years, Karn had managed to finish a human-sized clay figure that he stopped. He looked far worse than he did a few years ago. He had been burning for the last few years, and he hadn't gotten a glimpse of true rest. Now though, now that the status was finished, Karn went to sleep, and what sleep it was, for it lasted a few days. The tribe nearly took him for dead, but he did awaken from the sleep looking refreshed.

  Karn changed since that day; he was a lot calmer, and he looked like some sort of enlightened figure. Slowly, though, even though Karn himself may not have realized and his mannerism hadn't changed much, there was this restlessness in his very existence. Maybe restlessness is not the accurate description but a call to do something. What was this something? Perhaps to make the clay figure more like him, but Karn was unable to do such a thing. No, what Karn needed to do was made clear to him in a dream. It was the same dream he had before, but this time Karn's focus wasn't on the humanoid statues but on the way they shattered to reveal men inside them.

  The next day Karn truly shattered the clay figure. To those of the tribe that thought Karn had seen a great god, this was huge. It was as if something had shattered inside them, and then something very strange happened. Several members of the tribe saw visions of darkness and mud. This vision scared them, but it also led to them following Karn's way of the mud, and so it was that the mudborn tradition was established.

  Aram was a significant contributor to mudborns. Aram lived about 9000 years before the arcane era. At the time mankind experienced a shift to a sedentary lifestyle, and so the art of shaping clay became very popular. Mudborns, as a result, increased in numbers greatly. Aram was someone who wasn't good at the art. He nevertheless felt a numinous attraction to it. Aram tried very hard to learn the art, but even his final achievements were ultimately limited. Though to Aram the art by then had served its purpose. It had initiated Aram to the mystery of the mudborns. It had let Aram hear the divine symphony, and from then on, Aram forged his own art.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  It can be said Aram was much more fundamentalist than even the founder of the mudborns, Karn. He felt neither the mudborns making figures and shattering them nor the legend of the birth of men had anything to do with him. He instead let his ideas act as a seed and the divine symphony as a guide to follow his own way. He abandoned shaping and returned to mud. He resonated with the mud, the way it cooled, and the animals that lived in the mud. Even the gods were fundamentally mud, so why disdain the mud? This, of course, led to some indirect contributions, such as the use of some animals in medicine, food, and other purposes, and the use of the mud itself and things such as mud baths. Aram was much more attuned to mud than Karn, and for that he thought what mattered was the manner of mud. Mud was viscous and resistant to flow. In his opinion slugs were sacred creatures who had learned from the mud. They moved very slowly and unhurriedly.

  So he strove to be so. He bathed in mud and tried to be unhurried in everything. It was only when he had the illusion his blood was as viscous as mud that he considered his great work done.

  Potter too was a significant contributor to mudborns. It is worth knowing that such significant contributors are called by different names in different traditions. Exalted titles such as "archmage," "saint," "long," "immortal," "sage," and even more modern ones such as "doctor."

  Unlike Aram, Potter took to the shaping aspect of the art like a moth to a flame. He learned it fast but well, and it resonated with him deeply. Potter's talent for the art made it significantly easier for him, and he was attuned enough to hear the divine symphony through it. However, if there was one thing that made some mudborn fundamentalists angry at Potter, it was that Potter's incredible affinity with the shaping aspect of the art made it so that he disregarded the teachings of Aram to a large degree.

  Potter eventually followed what he perceived from the divine symphony. His talent with shapes made it so that he had the perception that everything was rotating, and rotation was a principle fundamental to life. His cyclic perception of the divine symphony and the world in general led him to a new avenue of thought in the mudborns.

  Eventually the ultimate goal of Potter's great work came to him in the form of a wheel. The pottery wheel thus was invented and transformed the art forever.

  Mudborns who followed Aram's thoughts at times call those who follow Karn's school of thought Claymen and those who follow Potter's, potters, to distinguish between they and them. It is nevertheless true that Karn is the founder of the mudborns, and Potter's contributions to mudborn tradition are noteworthy.

  From a theomorphian perspective, Dionysius is a god closely associated with the Mudborns. Oedipans too at times can sympathize with some of the mudborns' views. In fact, their founder is said to have once described spirituality like mud.

  For some strange reason Twilight as a whole associated the birth of men with earth ever since the mudborns, and it became a recurrent motif for a while.

  It can be said Twilight is a special world. It has a strange characteristic I am going to call "aurora." Auroras were once thought to be torches in the spirit world. Each new philosophy and thought is like such a torch illuminating and guiding the spirits. Each founder of traditions in Twilight lit such a torch.

  This idea of mudborns transcended beyond their aurora, though. It gained a sort of eternity. Maybe it was because it barely touched the concept of a gold, a black gold named oil. Whatever the reason, the mud, the oil, or the darkness, which gained eternity in Twilight, seemed to hold within an air of ancient life.

  It is worth noting that auroras themselves appear eternal, and the exalted ones of each tradition, whether explicitly or implicitly, are associated with the concept of longevity regardless of whether they believe in eternity or not. However, this idea of the mudborns gaining eternity meant a different thing; it meant that the mudborns inadvertently had brought forth an age. From 18000 BA (before the arcane era) till 12000 BA is called the dark age.

  The Dark Age lasted 6000 years, and since mudborns were the age bringers, they got to enjoy the benefit. Their influence rose to new heights in the Dark Age.

  Mudborns experienced huge shifts in time. From an earth, dirt, and mud origin for Twilight mankind to bringing the dark age and a shift to darkness. In 600 BA a liquid important to mudborns would already be known, but it would not be until the 18th to 19th century in the arcane era that it would make its significance known.

  Shifts in mudborn traditions and new significant contributors made them attempt several times to be known as darkborns, but it is clear that the origins of darkborns are mudborns, and they did not bring the age they brought intentionally. In fact, if there was one thing they tried intentionally, it was to make Twilight be named Earth or Terra or other names associated with them, but it never took hold, and the planet became known as Twilight.